'Next World Novella' - Matthias Politycki

Jeanne recently suggested that maybe I would benefit from writing some terser, quicker reviews to get me back on track with blogging. I took her advice, writing shorter reviews of a few books I didn't enjoy and a few quick thoughts on books I really liked, before heading back to a longer format feeling really like I'd woken up a little bit more. And now they and some of the longer reviews are just about ready to share (I've been so lazy about finishing them up). First up, 'Next World Novella' by Matthias Politycki, the fourth title from Peirine Press:

While I still think a lot about the third title from Peirine Press ‘A Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman’ (which I know I haven’t written about yet, but hopefully I will soon) I put ‘Next World Novella’ aside and its contents very nearly disappeared from my mind. It’s not that I didn’t like reading the book, but despite offering many prompts for further examination ‘Next World Novella’ did not generate any sparks in my brain. We just didn’t make a good pair.

Politycki’s story focuses on Hinrich, a posturing academic, who likes to think himself an intellectual, a ladies man and the centre of his wife’s entire life. Hinrich awakes one morning to find his wife slumped dead over an old manuscript of his that she was editing and her death draws him to reminisce about their life together, without ever really finding fault with his own behaviour. It’s a story I’m sure anyone who has dabbled in lit fiction will have come across before.

Stories about characters like Hinrich (at least the ones I’ve read) tend to be written with some implied indulgence of the academic’s behaviour, even at the same time that they report his true state of ridiculousness. In contrast, Politycki’s novella gives Doro, Hinrich’s wife, a voice and allows her to truly criticise her husband. While he is initially devastated by her death he spots an angry final note at the end of this manuscript (his long forgotten novella), which prompts him to read all of Doro’s comments while she rests dead on their couch. Doro’s voice can be heard finally criticising her husband’s behaviour, even as she escapes to the other side.

The part of the novel that I found most interesting was the text of Hinrich’s novella. The translator Anthea Bell appears to have deliberately used colloquial English words like ‘cool’, ‘pet’ and ‘fag’ to represent the fact that (I assume) in the original German Politycki has given Hinrich’s writing a self-conscious, pulpy narrative style, that projects his failed attempt to approximate the casual confidence of someone who has lived a roguish life as part of the traditional, masculine bar scene. Hinrich’s writing is terrible and falls well short of producing an authentic narrative voice. Instead his narrator sounds like someone who has heard people talking about these kinds of experiences and using these kinds of word, but can’t put them together in quite the right way:

‘Life at the Maus was never boring. What with the place being full of alcoholics, jazz trumpeters, philosophers and other such colourful figures, and from two or three in the morning everyone talking to everyone up and down the entire bar. In case of doubt there was always Mutt. Because Hanni, as cheerily as she joked, cursed or knocked back tequilas, was basically the opposite of flirtatious. If someone made the slightest move behind her back, suggesting never mind the peanuts and pretzels, he could fancy nibbling something very different, she’d immediately swing round, brown eyes with those tiny gold flecks in them putting on a fireworks display, hand on hip, asking so we could all hear, ‘Who was it wanted a nibble, then?’ And when someone had ordered nuts or cigarettes, reckoning he was in with a serious chance, he’d often take his disappointment out on Mutt, Hanni’s dog, a mongrel who regularly hung out with us. Did the old boy know who the kicks he often got under the table at dawn were really meant for?’

His novella only serves to highlight that Hinrich is a phoney and draws attention to how unreliable his version of events may be, once Doro’s notes instruct the reader to connect the novella with real life events. And while the stylistic experiment of writing in the voice of a very bad writer to make points about his character didn’t exactly add to the pleasure of my reading experience (I’m not fond enough of style to enjoy technique more than an entertaining reading experience) it’s the one point of interest that really stayed with me after I’d finished reading.

A book where a neglected female character gets a voice (even if it is posthumous) sounds just like the kind of book I should want to analyse, but I’m afraid I don’t feel compelled to dig into ‘next World Novella’. I feel that Politycki made a fantastic choice in giving Doro a voice. Her voice becomes stronger as the novel continues, creating a real personality, which reminds readers that the dead body they are returned to again and again had feelings and aspirations. However, I felt distanced from Doro because a great deal of Hinrich’s remembrances of her, involved him reflecting on her detailed construction of a personal after life, one which wasn’t personally interesting to me.

Lots of other bloggers got something more out of this novella and my reasons for not connecting with it are all about my own interests, so I’ll refer you to:

Iris on Books
cardigan verity
Savidge Reads
Amy Reads

Crime - Everybody's Doing It!

I'll be back on books soon everyone (and I need to tell you about meeting another book blogger in person) but for now I have some catch up impressions to offer about television (sadly not about the new series of Torchwood, we will not be speaking of that here). Do you remember I mentioned that to recover from my recent brush with the ‘ugh’ I was watching a LOT of crime drama? Apparently all UK tv providers had some huge crime drama budgets this spring and were determined to spend them, before someone reassigned the money to the department of truly weak comedies. Here’s what that budget bought us all:

‘Scott and Bailey’

I really, really wanted to like this, but in the end I didn’t get on with the first episode and ended up just watching the first and last part of this series. This is, what, the first show focused around a female police partnership since Cagney and Lacey (I am so unoriginal in my comparisons) but what’s that in the first episode? Why it’s Detective Bailey, abusing her police powers to avenge herself after a failed romantic relationship. GOOD LORD NO. Is it possible that you could revenge yourself without abusing police knowledge in order to do so? No? Well, if you absolutely have to use that knowledge, could you at least wait a couple of episodes so we can see that in general you are a decent, professional type? Or, if you want to go a different way you could abuse your police knowledge for other reasons as well, so that it’s clear that vaguely rule bendy copper is part of your core personality, not just something that rears up when a man has done you wrong. So many possibilities, why chose the most annoying one makers of drama? Oh and also the crime plot was a bit dull.

The last episode was...not totally better, but less annoying and more smart about the ladies. We got to see a lot of Scott and Bailey’s female boss, played by Amelia Bullmore (the more I see her, the more I like her) who sounds fascinating whenever she gets to speak. She used to be in profiling and in this episode she spends a lot of time being animated about her job, praised by a young profiler and enthusiastically missing the profiling department. Oooo. We get a better idea of Bailey’s competencies (she’s very smart and she notices everything, earning her respect and the name Sherlock), to go alongside that early picture of her abuse of power. And there’s a cracking cliff hanger ending.

Still, the villain of the over arching series plot is easily guessable and you can work out exactly what’s going on between everyone without needing to watch the rest of the series...Not exactly a recommendation, but I’ve watched a lot worse television than this last episode and enjoyed it.

‘Injustice’

I like Anthony Horowitz’s television work. It’s not fancy, or loud and although he refuses to help viewers solve crimes on their own (gah, please, I probably won’t work it out from your clues anyway, I just want a chance), his dramas do tend to contain detailed, human relationships. I got hooked during the first episode of this five part series, because it was rather slow to build and made the viewer get to know characters. These characters then changed over the five parts, into people who are not exactly sympathetic (a killer is revealed, a police man turns out to be emotionally abusive to his wife and a criminal turns out to be a scared victim). I mean if you’re going to make viewers ask ‘What are the morals of this situation?’ you need them really engaged with the characters, otherwise well who cares if you killed someone to make the world a better place soulless, featureless character?

It got good, it got a bit dull, and it got good again. Horowitz chucked in some espionage because that’s what he does (spies, EVERYWHERE) and all was disturbingly ambiguous. It didn’t really need to be on five straight nights. It didn’t have that big cliff hanger appeal and I could have done with some time to mull over how I felt about the character’s actions. Otherwise very polished.

‘Case Histories’

Jason Issacs runs. Jason Issacs takes off his shirt. Jason Issacs smokes sexily. Most of the other characters are women, so there’s no real male competition to distract from Jason Issacs. Jason Isaacs!

Some reviews I’ve read concentrated on the large collection of strong women surrounding Jason Isaac’s character. Having so many female characters around making up the support and the background to the world is great (the sisters’ relationship in the first two parter is especially touching) and needed. At the same time the first two episodes of ‘Case Histories’ are clearly the Jason Isaacs/Jackson Brodie vehicle, where all eyes should be aimed at JI at all times, so it’s hard to get too excited about there being so many women. The women don’t get really active, present parts; instead they die, talk to JI, or recount their past (his daughter and the sisters’ parts are exceptions to this). Even when they’re murderers all their action takes place off camera. You can sort of tell they’re busy having active lives away from JI and the cameras, but is that enough? Tricky. I end up seeing the first two episodes as good subversions of lots of common female presentation, filled with that oh so unusual female gaze, but I’m still not totally satisfied with them.

Some of the female actresses talk about the amount of strong female characters in the series, at the BBC website. Unfortunately this section is titled ‘Jackson’s Women’ a title which maybe signposts that my problems may not all be in my head.

The third episode is much more YES ABOUT THE LADIES, as Jason Isaccs is joined by plucky, odd teenage side kick played by Gwyneth Keyworth (such a cool young actress) who gets to go around with him solving the mystery of her employers disappearance (and has all kinds of agency besides that).

Maybe if he hadn’t made that joke about his little daughter dressing like a prostitute I’d be happier with this show. Or maybe I’m just difficult and should read the books first. Drama wise I enjoyed it. It had good actors, stories and believable relationships between characters. I just wasn’t sold on the female representation.

‘The Shadow Line’

But then compared to something like ‘The Shadow Line’, ‘Case Histories’ female representation is so much wider and better, so maybe that’s what I should judge it against rather than some misty eyed ideal (eh I do not like this idea).

Not awesome:

Making the name of the one female police officer Honey
Being another crime program where women go to die, or act as plot devises to spur their men into action
Some gay representation that is questionable in the grand scheme of gay representation

Awesome:

Pretty much every actor and actresses performances, but especially the ooooohhh Christopher Eccleston, Rafe Spall and Lesley Sharp
Characters like Jay Wratten and Gatehouse, creeping you out all episode long
Tension
Storylines with so much plot weaving, honestly BBC I had no idea you could plot this well, why do you not do so more often
Love of chucking in a completely unbelievable but awesome fight sequence every three episodes
The ending which put ‘The Departed’ on notice for not being ruthless enough.

‘Vera’

I found the crimes slightly dull and unnecessarily complicated. None of the episodes needed a two hour slot except for the final one, which shows some of the complexities of police officers necessarily leaving behind unsolved cases. However, very interesting personal relationships and character backgrounds popped up (Joe’s wife’s post natal depression, Vera’s awkwardness). And I can’t be totally against a show featuring an older, non nonsense female detective. Vera’s character is really interesting, as she goes along being brusque, smart and thoughtful. So, another show where the characters trump the plot for me.

‘The Mentalist’

Another show where I’m less interested in the crimes and more into the characters relationships. When I last talked about this program someone pointed out that the crimes investigated show a remarkably lack of diversity (overwhelmingly rich, white, straight people seemed to be involved as victims or criminals) to which I’d just like to say, wow, on the money, thanks for lifting the lids off my eyes. TV lands so neatly on the default sometimes and I don’t even notice.

The over arching narratives that carry through the seasons are more compelling than each random crime, which Jane will no doubt solve at the beginning of the episode just like Columbo in a flashier suit. I’m more interested in whether Rigsby and Van pelt get back together; whether Lisbeth and Jane are really just meant to be good colleagues and friends; whether Cho will ever get a romantic partner... I was impressed by the resolution to the Red John serial killer story line in the finale. So surprised (in a good way) by who they got to play Red John and glad I guessed this series’ police accomplice (because it suggests a Rigsby/Van pelt reunion which I want desperately). There are enough lose ends for another series, but the last episode would make for a reasonably satisfying end if this should be the last series.

So, that’s the tv I watched to unwind. Did anyone else dip into everything offered by the recent crime drama bonanza? Any theories on why so much original crime drama was shown all around the same time. And has anyone seen the new series of 'Luther', which was the one big crime work I missed?

Indie Awards 2011 - Exciting GLBTQ Releases

You may, or may not know that I'm a panellist for the Indie Lit Awards GLBTQ panel again this year (I haven’t been the best promoter, what with dropping out of blogging regularly over the last few months). I thought I’d take a moment to share some of the books I’m positively drooling over that I would love to be asked to read, once nominations open for the award (September 2011 – December 2011). Massive thanks to those who posted these books on their blogs and brought them to my attention:

Young Adult

‘Sister Mischief’ - Laura Goode: I almost bought this yesterday despite, but I desperately need new holiday clothes out of this month’s pay packet and do not need new books because I have a bazillion already (stupid logic and money). I first saw it mentioned at Reading in Color. The author’s recent essay at Diversity in YA made me definitely decide that I want to experience its particular combination of friendship, romance and hip-hop.

‘Huntress’ - Malinda Lo: I finished reading this one recently, so I won’t say too much about it yet, but thanks go to Renay for encouraging me to read it asap in order to produce a companion post to her thoughts on ‘Ash’.

‘Witch Eyes’ - Scott Tracey: I can’t quite remember where I saw this one first, but I suspect it was in a Booksmugglers Radar post. The hero has magical eyes; the author’s name sends a geek girl thrill through me every time I read it. Logic doesn’t always come into my book choices.

‘With or Without You’ - Brian Farrey: Karen Mahoney’s blog recently mentioned this project from editor turned writer Farrey, which has the coolest music referencing title I’ve seen in a long time. Sinister secret societies and divided loyalties make it sound a dark, mysterious book.

‘I am J’ - Cris Beam: The story of a transgender boy’s teenage years, which I’m drawn to by the strong simplicity of the title. I think I first saw this one at Doret’s blog and she has a fantastic list of GLBTQ titles up, where I also found this next book...

‘Boyfriends with Girlfriends’ - Alex Sanchez: I wasn’t totally won over by Sanchez’s ‘The God Box’ and sadly Phoebe North’s review makes me think he might not be a writer whose style I’ll ever get on with. But Sanchez’s big name pull is hard to resist and again there’s a damn fine music reference in the title (I’m a sucker for a clever musical title).

Adult

‘The Lover's Dictionary’ - David Leviathan: A new David Leviathan book is always to be celebrated. I have to credit a non-blog source for my first sighting of this as I read about it in The Times supplement, but you can’t read that online so I’ll send you over to Simon’s post instead.

‘Rory's Boys’ - Alan Clark: The next three books popped up on Savidge Reads, where Simon is preparing for the second Green Carnation Prize. This story about a retirement home for gay men sounds cockle warming...

‘Stranger's Child’ - Alan Hollinghurst: ...Alan Hollinghurst’s newest sounds like an engrossing country house saga...

‘History of a Pleasure Seeker’ - Richard Mason: ...and finally we have a decadent offering full of scandal and beauty

‘A Study in Lavender’ – ed. Joseph R G Marco: http://www.cheryl-morgan.com/?p=11141 Cheryl Morgan mentioned this anthology which queers the Sherlock Holmes stories and um, yes, I want that.

‘The Song of Achilles’ – Madeline Miller: A final, late entry to this list that I just found out about today, comes from Cornflower Books. ‘Something deeper’ (oh, what a quaint description) than friendship blossoms between Achilles and Patroclus in this war torn love story of ancient Greece.

Adult non-fiction

‘The Queen’s Throat:Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire’ – Wayne Kestenbaum: How rare for me to say I want to read a non-fiction book! Jessa Crispin at Bookslut just makes http://www.thesmartset.com/article/article07121101.aspx books about opera sound so frustratingly appealing.


Possibly eligible

‘Sky Academy: The Pearl Wars’ - Nick James: I can’t find much information about this book yet, so I’m assuming that it fits the criteria for the GLBTQ indie lit award. The blurb sets my ‘subtle marketing disguising of subject matter’ alarms tingling. ‘Witch Eyes’ appears in the Amazon recommendations for ‘other books you might like’. Can anyone confirm or deny whether this young adult fantasy novel contains any GLBTQ characters?

What am I missing? What other GLBTQ 2011 releases should I be excited about?

Women in Sci-Fi Week: A Lady Business Project

I promise not to spam you with tons of other journal ladybusiness, but I want to briefly mention our week dedicated to women in sci-fi, because I know the subject is relevant to the interests of at least three people who sometimes read here.

So far this week:

Ana has reviewed the YA novel ‘The Adoration of Jenna Fox’
We’ve all contributed to a link post outlining recent discussions about women and sci-fi (and there are some bonus links at the end, one of which features sciency girls and Lego trophies)
I’ve reviewed ‘To Say Nothing of the Dog’
Susan from spindizzy has provided a guest post full of mini reviews

Still to come:

Renay will review ‘The Hunger Games’
Ana and Thea from ‘The Booksmugglers’ will pop by with an epic rec list

And that’s not all folks! Right now you could potentially win books by recommending science fiction written by women. Remember when I said ‘Hey ‘A Wish After Midnight’ is pretty cool’? Well you could now win your very own copy of Zetta Elliot’s novel, along with a copy of ‘The Hunger Games’ by Suzanne Collins and ‘Kindred’ by Octavia Butler. Just for reccing by 29th June! How easy is that?

Reports From Theatre Land

Hello everyone, just a quick update post, after my second London trip to talk about theatre and sightseeing!

Two weekends ago I met Ana, Ana and Meghan for general hanging out on the way to a production of ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ at The Globe. Honestly I had a fantastic time, in fact it was one of the best days I’ve had in ages meeting new people as everything just seemed so easy (so easy that I over talked way too often).

I thought the play was lovely, but then I’ve yet to see a bad staging of a Shakespeare play, his work makes everyone try their hardest it seems. Even the adaptations I wasn’t expecting huge things from about (Alastair McGowan and Jason Merrels in a touring production of ‘Measure for Measure’) have been wonderful. And, ok I’m a celeb spotter at the theatre so it was really exciting to see cast members I recognised from television *is a philistine for being excited to see Geoffrey from The Fresh Prince of Bell Air on stag*. The Globe’s staging is something special. It may even compete with the RSC’s varied staging experiments (look I am RSC biased ok), because the RSC theatre in Stratford does not have water features, or real trees.

The ladies were very generous and I ended up with a huge sack of books loaned and given:

Ok, maybe I bought a few as well. I couldn't get a good picture of them and have lost my patience with the camera so they were:

'The Eagle of the Ninth' - Rosemary Sutcliffe (childhood revisit after loving the film based on this book)
'Miss Hargreaves' - Frank Baker (single woman heroine)
And a non-fiction book about the real story behind Robinson Crusoe (which I can't remember the title of right now)

And then the day after I went to meet a friend who had just got engaged. Lots of ring ogling and Pimms on that occasion.

Last weekend I went on an epic theatre trip with my mum where we saw two shows, went sightseeing around London all day every day and took a theatre walking tour. Highlights included seeing the only portrait of Shakespeare with a good claim to being painted from life (Shakespeare was a rake I tell you), finding a ‘right out of Blyton’ school fete in Deans gate, which enticed us to sit with Pimms and cake made by a Latin teacher to watch Morris dancing, spotting pelicans in St James Park, a trip to Salvatore’s (the foooood is so good) and Moroccan food on the Southbank. Oh and the theatre of course:

Les Miserables: It was my second time seeing Les Mis and omfg I had forgotten how great it is. The songs from the word go are all singalongamazing. I like the crowd songs best ( ‘Work Song’ ‘At the End of the Day’, ‘Do You Hear the People Sing?’), but some of the solo performances were just so outstanding that even a musical dunce like me could understand I was seeing something special.

The story is kind of a weird, but oddly hopeful mixture of the socially progressive (‘Lovely Ladies’, is a song which confronts everyone’s ideas about the comic image of the prostitute and Jean Valjean’s storyline forces the audience to question established ideas about criminality) and adherence to the limitations of old standards (oh Eponine I hope thousands have written fan fiction where you don’t have to die just because you dare to love the hero when he loves someone more traditionally feminine and socially acceptable). I’d love to know how much of the each position is Hugo and how much comes from the modern producers, which I guess means I have to read the very large set of novels.

War Horse: I’m absolutely gutted that I didn’t enjoy ‘War Horse’ more, as I was expecting to throw myself into loving it more than Les Mis. First let me say everything good I’ve heard about the staging and the puppetry is true. The puppets and the people working the horses are fantastic, as the mechanism and the puppeteers work together to produce true depictions of horse’s behaviour and movements (the front legs don’t quite look right as the horses run, after Joey grows up, but I think that’s probably a technical limitation). I loved the computerised backdrops, the actors dancing birds in flight across the stage, the creation of a tank on stage – basically all the staging, sets and costumes are amazing.

Unfortunately some of the main actors in the performance we saw were really bad at their jobs. They were obviously working off that well repeated principle that acting has to be larger in the theatre to reach the people at the back, but they seemed to lack the ability to retain the nuance of the emotions they were supposed to be portraying, as they projected larger and louder. Some of the actor’s performances were shouty. Some performances were just confusingly lacking in emotion and the actors uttered their lines with such disjointed inflection that I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at the serious points they were trying to make.

While bad acting is obviously always a problem in a play, it was especially detrimental to my reaction towards ‘War Horse’. The play’s story is hugely sentimental. There’s a scene where Joey the horse is creates the opportunity for co-operation between soldiers on both sides of the trenches. The finale has Albert reuniting with his horse, while blinded by tear gas, just before bells signal the end of WWI. These are not subtle scenes. Their meaning and intent are clear; war is hell and we should all weep for those caught up in it. Now the uncompromising forcefulness of this message and the blatant attempt to inspire sympathetic emotions should not necessarily have been something that turned me away from this play. I agree with the sentiment that war is harmful and it would be inaccurate for me to say that I’m put off entertainment by heavy sentiment, or obvious displays of politically partial sentiment. I do prefer this kind of message to be subtle and less one sided, but I adored ‘The Lion King’, which is very sentimental and I enjoyed ‘Blood Brothers’ which contains a political message that lacks ambiguity. I could name lots of other media I like that is kind of sappy (Les Mis, that I’ve praised above got me in the heart with ‘Empty Chairs at Empty Tables’ and ‘Castle on a Cloud’ which are both very much ‘cry, damn you’ heart string tugger songs), or very one-sided in its political stance, but something about the combination of sentiment, straight down the line opinions and awful acting triggered a bad reaction that I don’t think I’d have had if the play had just been kind of fuzzy hearts wanting and firm in its opinions.

I did find myself so interested, as a big ‘Black Beauty’ fan, in the parallels between Anna Sewell’s novel, which was partly written to illuminate the poor treatment of cab horses and ‘War Horse’, which shows a lot of the pain horses went through as they served in WWI. I think the production company (and I assume Michael Morpurgo, the author of the novel the play is based on) have tried to follow a similar structure to ‘Black Beauty’, as the play sees one horse as he’s passed on to different ‘owners’ (there are other similarities that suggest this play is actively recognising a link to Sewell’s novel, but the structure seems like the main one to me).

It’s interesting just to compare the difference in structure, but I can’t quite stop myself from making judgement comparisons as well. Which piece of media uses this type of structuring device the best? I’m not convinced that there’s enough space in this production to pull off this structure as successfully as in ‘Black Beauty’. The play requires a narrator to help the audience understand what is going on and without having Joey talk in a permanent voice over (as Black Beauty does in the 1994 film) humans must take that part. In order to care about the thoughts each character has about the brutal world they live in, the audience needs to get to know and care about each human narrator as much as they care about the constantly present Joey. In my opinion the play just doesn’t support the audience enough to encourage them to form a deep connection with all the multiple human ‘owners’. Some of these human characters lack development. Some are cast off as soon as is convenient for the plot, for example a French child whose live is eventually blown apart by war never finds Joey again. For all the audience knows wanders in the woods alone until she dies, even though she has shown just as much narrative innocence, kindness and morality as Albert and so has by the rules of this narrative earned a similar happy ending). The narrative doesn’t encourage the audience to care what happens to her after she’s played her narrative part (sweet girl who learns a bit of English and shows her love for a horse). The consequence of including so many characters that lack back story or depth of personality is that a majority of the play has no emotional resonance and the audience must rely on their connection with the horse to feel the full importance of everything that takes place in the play. I came away feeling I’d have enjoyed ‘War Horse’ with just the horses and a mime show from the actors.

Saying that, one of the most affecting parts of the play comes when a less developed character (Albert’s cousin) must charge Joey into the gaps of the enemy lines. His repeated, desperate cry of ‘Where are the gaps, sir?’ as the sounds of war play loudly through the theatre, brought to life a soldier’s experience through the simplicity of the fear and perseverance on display. I’ve got to give ‘War Horse’ some of my heart for that and the vivid mechanical recreation of horses; I just wish I could feel a little bit more towards it.

Now a question for you all. What production should I see next be it musical, plays or Shakespeare if the opportunity comes up?

NHYA 2011: First Round Judging Decisions

Last weekend I was in London visiting with the lovely Ana, Ana and Meghan (which is wonderfully described by Ana in her recent post about Downton Abbey - I had so much fun ladies, thanks for making hanging out so enjoyable). I stayed over a night in Shoreditch to see a friend from university who was passing through London. This Friday I'm off back to the capital for a theatre weekend with my mother (for anyone who's interested we're seeing War Horse, Les Miserable for a second time and taking a theater walking tour).

I'm having so much fun off line at the moment and summer holds the promise of many more activities. I've also got a lot of on-line posts sitting around waiting to go up and lots of lovely online chatter seems to always be happening. Let me put my best foot forward just before I pack my suitcase and begin by showing you the results of the first round judging decisions in the Nerds Heart YA tournament. Here's what happened in the first round and a link to what the second round match ups will
look like:

First Round Judging Decisions

Jun 13th: This Purple Crayon and Book Addiction judged 'The Red Umbrella' by Christina Gonzalez and 'Tell Us We're Home' by Marina Budhos.

June 13th: Viloet Crush and The Literary Wife judged 'Stringz by Micheal Wenberg and 'Five Flavors of Dumb' - Anthony John.

'Five Flavors of Dumb' by Anthony John moves on.

'The Red Umberella' by Christina Gonzalez moves on.

June 15th: Pineapples and Pyjamas and Book Harbinger judged 'Tall Story' by Candy Gourlay and 'Premiere' by Melody Carlson.

'Tall Story' by Candy Gourlay moves on.

June 15th: Bookworming in the 21st Century and Birdbrain(ed) judged 'Finding Family' by Tonya Bolden and 'Toads and Diamonds' by Heather Tomlinson.

'Toads and Diamonds' by Heather Tomlinson moves on.

June 17th: The Brain Lair and Books, Movie and Chinese Food judged 'When the Stars Go Blue' by Cardidad Ferrer and 'Dark Water' by Laura McNeal.

'Dark Water' by Laura McNeal moves on.

June 17th: Secret Dreamworld of a Bookaholic judged 'The Last Summer of the Death Warriors' by Francisco Stork and 'The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin' by Josh Berk.

'The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin' by Josh Berk moves on.

June 20th: A Backwards Story and we're not butterflies judged 'Invisible Girl' by Mary Hanlon Stone and 'Dirty Little Secrets' by C J Omololu.

'Dirty Little Secrets' by C J Omololu moves on.

June 20th: The Wandering Librarians Anna and Arianne judged 'Summer Song' by Louise Blaydon and 'A Love Story Starring My Best Friend' by Emily Horner.

'A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend' by Emily Horner moves on.

June 22nd: Early Nerd Special and Snarky Mamma judged 'Stargazer' by Von Allan and 'How I Made it To Eighteen (A Mostly True Story)' by Tracy White.

'How I Made It To Eighteen (A Mostly True Story)' by Tracey White moves on.

June 22nd: Shylock Books and The Reading Zone judged 'The Kid Table' by Andrea Seigel and 'Teenie' by Christopher Grant.

'The Kid Table by Andrea Seigel moves on.

June 24th: Truth, Beauty, Freedom and Books judged 'Paper Daughter' by Jeanette Ingold and 'What Momma Left Me' by Renee Watson.

'What Momma Left Me' by Renee Watson moves on.

June 24th: Book Nut judged 'Mindblind' by Jennifer Roy and '8th Grade Super Zero' by Olugbemisola Rhuday Perkovitch.

'8th Grade Super Zero' by Olugbemisola Rhuday Perkovitch moves on.

June 27th: TATAL Online judged 'Where the Truth Lies' by Jessica Warman and 'Jumpstart the World' by Catherine Ryan Hyde.

'Jumpstart the World' by Catherine Ryan Hyde moves on.

June 27th: the rejectionist judged 'Pull' by B A Binns and 'Efrain's Secret' by Sofia Quintero.

'Pull' by B A Binns moves on.

June 29th: Stella Matutina judged 'The End: Five Queer Kids Save the World' by Nora Olsen and 'Bleeding Violet' by Dia Reeves.

'Bleeding Violet' by Dia Reeves moves on.

June 29th: Sunshine and Bones judged 'Bamboo People' by Mitali Perkins and 'Abe in Arms' by Peggy Deitz Shea.

'Abe in Arms' by peggy Deitz Shea moves on.

The second round judging decisions will start rolling in on Monday 11th July and I can't wait! To see exactly which books will be slapping each other in the face with a delicate white glove follow the link to our second round schedule.

Have fabulous weekends everyone, see you next week.